like a deer’s head stuffed on shaky walls,
my eyes have become bulged, my tongue sedated.
my hunter wore no gear.
padded quietly underneath the yellow moon.
he found my limbs first, yanking and pulling
while my fingers burned.

my hunter had a smile like LSD,
his lips had lines shaky and uncontrolled.
he pulled me deep, deep, deep into
the forest, between oaks and pines and
the ground tasted like what i wanted to forget.
like blood.
like *****.
like nothing.

my hunter had stroked me.
such. a. prize. such. a. prize. such. a. prize.
he attempted to recite poetry, but
his voice sounded muffled, placing emphasis
on the wrong words.

my hunter wrapped my locks around my throat, and pulled
and yanked and pulled.
it all smelled like fire.
my wrists vomited violet flowers.
i had wanted to show him.

but my hunter chopped. me. up.
such a face. my legs, gushing pink and red and white.
my arms tinged yellow.

my head rests above his bed, and i watch
and watch and watch

my teeth won’t stop chomping

i am aching and my tongue tastes like your
******* ignorance. like salt with *****,
i want to *****.
your fingers prodded me until i thought they reached my
spine.
take the pieces out, i have already lost the stability of my
own canvas.
you are a man with unshaken wrists,
who's legs known only how to walk away,
your speech like writing on pavements, never lasting for
too long.
once you had covered me head to toe with marks.
bruises. scratches. i had become the rag doll.
you threw while your lips shivered,
your hand on my throat no longer felt like
peace.
i cannot stop thinking of your fingers in me, searching for
a lie, or a truth, or a ******* resemblance.
nose breathing in the fumes of tears, sweat and mistakes.
for some seconds, i had believed your teeth wanted to chew out flowers,
not ******* thorns.
in the morning, your face, i no longer knew.

you had become the monster i had seen so many times before.
the monster who says i miss you yet can't
look at you in public spaces.
the monster who only calls you beautiful when your legs are wrapped
around him.

i have known this monster. time and time and time again.

I have been obsessed with staring at people’s ring fingers. I have been obsessed with seeing if there are rings, and if there are, why? And if there isn’t, why? I have been obsessed with the concept of marriage. Of babies. Of living together forever and ever with just one person.

The thought tastes like milk washed down with soap. But I cannot stop staring at people’s hands. I want to ask how they knew. Was there a switch that was flipped? Was there music loud and thudding in their ears? How did they know that when they’re old with wrinkles under their eyes they’ll still want to kiss the other’s lips?

I check off my lovers with a sharpie on my wrists. I wonder if any of them thought I was the one. The sharpie bleeds and stains my shirt. A man told me once he loved me within a month of knowing me. Was that true, never ending love? He left cigarette ash in my car and didn’t know where to put his fingers. He had wanted a house, a kid, a dog.

In coffee shops, in grocery stores, in hallways, I am staring at people’s fingers. Some are smudged, some are dry with peeling skin, some are softly pink, and when I see the golden or silver bands milky soap sits underneath my throat.

I am checking my wrists.

i've known the boys like him, the boys
with the gentle eyelashes and the
lip petals and spikes.
he touches my hair, twirls it in his fingers.
i am always nothing more to them.

i want to be earthquakes and avalanches,
yet i fold, becoming the beers in their guts, the ash
on their tongues.
but the way his tongue finds my pelvic bones,
how his calluses kiss my bruises.
his scent echoes inside my pillows,
denial like ***** bordering my throat thick.

the boys want my skin, to flay and wear it.
i am a prize, shiny and golden,
and he is licking my insides, my blood and guts.
like wine,
on his mouth, dripping down his chest.

i see how he stares at others,
calculating and timing,
but in the end i am the one, bent over, the one he says he loves.
(to ****).
and i wonder if this will always be this.
nights tasting like cider and ***,
knees scabbed and bleeding and scabbed and
bleeding.

he never touches me outside the bedroom, his
fingers glued to the bike handles.
i want to cut him open and see what's really inside.

we never talk about the ******* afterward.
it's hidden in the dust on my sheets, his liquids still fresh,
his cologne stamped on my pillowcases,

instead he asks about work, mentions his exhaustion,
doesn't bring up the marks he always leaves,
the one on my arm like a birthmark,
the small red ones on my back,

the ones on my hips like roses left out for too long

last night his fingers pressed on my throat and he kept asking how
i liked it. i was drunk, he was drunk and when he said he loved *******
me i almost thought he said
he loved
me.

in my room we spoke of what we always spoke of, books and PhD's,
of classmates, of futures, and interrupting our conversation his
lips found mine, in a hungry kind of way,

he never really liked to kiss.

it'll be two weeks until i see him again, perhaps longer,
and our talks will be briefer, and i am hoping my scratches are long
and violent on his back, i hope his skull is stinging from my
pulls.

we **** like we'll never **** again, and maybe i haven't had
this passion in a long while,
because i know he'll never be mine.

his fingers on my throat felt like freedom, and it's in those hours between
late night and early morning we are nothing but skin,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,

i'm choking on my spit

i've seen your face, recently,
popped up like that nightmare i keep having where my body is left in
lukewarm sweat. your eyes are still as green as stems, and i want to
upchuck upchuck upchuckupchuckupchuck

it's funny how when i was 15 you were my king,
i would have crawled hands and knees, blisters popping like your
car speeding, impressing the ladies with your hair flicks and
tricks
and i know now i am still that 15 ****** dress up girl to you, only i've
filled out, filled in, know where to put the eyeliner, make it waterproof,
knowing how to speak, my tongue is whipping and sharpening

the last time we spoke we didn't speak. you didn't let me.
you shoved the drinks down my throat so fast the cards were blurry and you waited oh so patiently. 'you're such a bad girl', you said.
with your manhood prodding me, you spoke mean. you never spoke nice.
i wonder if i'll always love and hate you.

for so long you made me question myself.
maybe i shouldn't have worn that, or said that, or placed my foot a certain way or maybe i showed my teeth too much or maybe i was being too flirty, or maybe not enough.
these self doubts became my condolences, and even after we were 'friends', you never looked at me the same way. i had to be 'friends' with you because my friends loved you, even after i told them what you did to me.

i see your face like beers shoved in the back of the fridge,
and i am so mad at you, so mad, so mad, so mad, you've taken my guts
and thrown them into the ******* sun.
i was fifteen, you were almost eighteen you and took my limbs and broke them all.
i was prettiest to you on my knees, but baby i am the most beautiful when i'm stabbing you you you you
repeatedly.

i have a lump under my armpit,
thick and pressured, i want to bite it off, throw it inside a bin

it's coming to me when i am feeling bumps and growths in my
frontal lobes. as i walk into the sunshine,
i can no longer see the road or the buildings or the twigs in her
hair.

mom had her breast removed.
i cannot bare to think about me
without any
hair.

these words that i want in the worlds books, will instead
sink into my veins and have no meaning
but instead let me be my own Ophelia, and i will link daisies in my hair
and drown singing no song but my own

my fingers are pressing against the wall, but all i have is callouses.

i am tired, and my bones are sore and at times
i want to curl up within the ground and
have the tufts of grass and dried up leaves call
me home.
at moments i am so tired of others,
their teeth, too much shown and how it all
seems like paint still trying to dry.
i am tired of men waggling their lips, and i am tired
of women always defending and i am tired of people
pushing my veins inwards.

i feel like weeds trying to grow in botanical gardens.
i cannot fit.
i cannot speak enough or be quiet enough.
i am shoved into outlines designed for others.

i do not know where my fingers should lie, and when i am
drunk and screaming i (almost) feel the most
alive, but then
when i am surrounded by history in beautifully spaced
architecture, i am
(almost) alive.

where do i start and where do i end.

why do bruises on me look like jewelry?
i am nothing. but i am you.
if i bite his shoulders hard enough, i can find bones.
i can find the Great Wall of China.
these lines on hundred year old parchment has become my salvation.

i want to be alone,
yet i want his nails digging me up.
i want to hear her tongue on her teeth,
yet my lungs can't expand
enough.

why must my heart be like feathers falling too
quickly?
i cannot help but feel and love and feel and love
and it is all too much.
he has been in my dreams, a shadow
who kisses my eyebrows and walks with
patience besides me.
i believe this is the flesh him even though i know.
his questions are nothing of substance, and i
know he is eager to slip my veil off again and
again and again.
but can't he see my rib bones poking through my chest?

i am in love with his tongue, and perhaps nothing
else.
he reads poetry but holds no compassion.
eager to lick but quick to bite my
lips together.

i am so much more than my open legs.
i am so much more than my ripped tights and rimmed eyes.

but he stares at me like fish in tanks.
eyes too wide and mouth agape.
i am not the food placed on the surface, waiting to be
swallowed and digested.

when i try to pry open his chest,
he pushes me down.
lathers me in silver until my throat is
hollow.

he is a writer
but refuses to see the words in
people.

he is running down my legs. sticky
inside my thighs. like the glue you
used in elementary school. the kind that
peeled off your finger tips.
he is inside of me, dampening my
underwear, seeping on my fingerprints.

i do not know if he likes me,
but his touches feel almost like
love.
but it's not love.

i am the girl, sticky with him and
attempting to recreate my spine.
i am the girl, marks like warning
signs on my *******, but all i can say is
(harder).

i want, this girl to jump inside that lake and
drown.
and wake baptized, fresh, alive.

he is inside my hair. he likes my
hair. he loves my hair.
but this is not love.

i tell him to pull, but he is too
gentle.
i am the girl spilling out her
teeth.
and you are the boy chewing up my
guts.
it is not love.

he is the foreign boy who smells, not like
the ads or the films or novels.
he smells like early mornings and that is where i am always
finding his lips.
he is sinking in my intestines, writhing and thriving, he is the upchuck
threatening beneath my
molars.
i am the girl crashing hard and burning diamonds.
within this room he has shredded me.

it is not love. he is not love.
but it is something.
something.
something.

he wants to taste me.
i wonder what i am on his tongue,
like candy floss, fluffy and dissolving, or
steak, rough yet succulent.
his tongue pin ******, the lips
like leaves, shifting through open
streets.
to be this alive and breathing,
with alcohol in my liver and his strands
of hair underneath my fingernails.

a secret.

i feel alive, though.
so alive.
the cigarettes and cologne are stuck
in my ribs, latching themselves between
bits of flesh.

i have been told my eyes are embers.

i wanna burn him to the ground.

she had never fallen in love with a man with tattoos.
no, the guy with the 'friend' tattoos didn't count.
they looked like **** and she remembered
how one used to bleed.

she had wondered what attracted her to this one.
he was bitter, and sour, lemons and limes
puckering up.
he complained.
his job was never enough, his food,
his bed.
she had no reason. perhaps it was his voice,
the accent with spiked inflection and soft spoken
syllables. she knew it definitely was the tattoos.

covered. black ink. pressed into skin.
maybe it was the pain she thought.
the hours spent. what are the stories? she'd ask.
there are no stories.
do you regret?
no. he says.

he likes to ****. she likes that about
him. he likes to read.
******* and tattoos. pain and pleasure. pleasure and pain.
she wonders if he can read her like she can read him.

they are both unhappy. they are both stuck.
but he gives her the pain, the pleasure.
he gives her the moment of forgetting, she hadn't had that.
she traces his tattoos with her peeling fingers.

does this hurt? no. he says.
can i hurt you? yes. she says.

what is it about the tattoos? is it the
artwork? the needle prodding.
inside, tearing the pores, the atoms,
blood bubbles bursting.

she thinks and bites his lip.
why are we addicted to this strange pain?

she's not in love with this man, but she
is in love with the hurt.
she craves it.

within my guts, perhaps there is no longer
slivers of withdrawal, of doubt,
but i can only wonder why i keep envisioning
my ****** gums,
stained like smashed cherries.
i know i love you, but you are now
the static pieces of glass in my palms
and i must be patient, but it is sinking
on the back of my tongue, and i am attempting
not to choke, not to swallow
so my insides are not shredded.
i would shred my skin and take my veins,
tie it together into bows, or boy scout knots,
if i knew i could curve your lips.
i would hang the veins inside your room,
connecting bits and pieces of my eyelashes,
if if if i knew it would lift you up from
tomorrow.
but i am not the girl who can tear herself in and out,
because my bits have gone already.

i know i love you, but i am so tired.
so tired. so tired.
i can't blame you, i can't bite your cheeks until
it sits like butterflies in your spine.

i do not know how to hold a shaking room.

yes, i know the way his mouth twitches when he smiles,
how his eyes will turn to different shades of green when the hours
change,
and how he lends his fingers when you need assistance,
and how his room was our paradise, and i know how we screamed
to those songs in his car late at night, the snow pressed against
the windows

but what i don’t know, dear friends,
is how my words are empty pill bottles,
"he forced me"
and your cheeks tighten, your eyelashes dry,
i don’t know how my bruises, the blood caked on my thighs
are not as important as his pride,
the way he speaks of money like his one true love,

but what i don’t know is how when you were passed out,
sleeping away through **** hazes and drunken episodes,
his fingers scraped the back of my neck, and pushed and pushed
and pushed until
my teeth were coated with fear,
my throat gurgling with guilt

to my friends, i do not understand,
and when you mention his name, i am back in that room,
fifteen and in love and afraid,
with you under blankets,
oblivious

i hope between your thighs i speak in riddles
you solve days later, sweat like moths rising
on your upper lip,
you speak in flash fiction between mine, stories
i linger in, swim in, fall in, wanting to hear it
again
again
again.

a little girl idolized me today,
"you are so fast!" her dress had pink
flamingos and her hair glistened underneath the shaky
sun. her brown eyes were orbs of hope.

"you know, anything boys can do, girls can do just as well"
her mother’s advice, i never heard from my own.

"well, she probably thought you were real pretty"
my shoulders slumped as i sipped cherry juice. sweat slipped
beneath my belly.

pretty? pretty? pretty?

what about my ability to run, how my muscles
expand, contract. how my brain is churning with explosives,
and my heart is able to let all these words and turn them into
daisies.

the little girl hugged me before she left,
"you are so good!"

i never heard pretty, or cute, or beautiful,


and i want this girl to grow up to know she is the veins
beneath the grounds, and she can grow up to be
whoever she
wants.

an athlete, a mathematician, a fashion designer,
as long as she’s not only
*pretty

when i was 15, a boy with a fake tooth and emerald eyes
took me to a steep hill and attempted to throw
me over his shoulder.
the grass was freshly wet, so we slipped and my knees bounced.

a school night, he invited me in his parents car and
we sat side by side in the back.
my throat was full of barbwire and i couldn’t move, my knees
burning, my arms rigid. a boy with subtle eyelashes told me i was cool,
but the barbwire traveled through legs.

we used to watch movies until he got bored and i fell in love
too quickly, shivering between his legs, his fingers
pulsing bruises.

when i was 17 i fell in love with a chain smoker and a man
who couldn’t grow up. except no, it wasn’t love. perhaps pity,
but i liked his large hands and how he had seen the world through
tar tinted glasses.

he told me we had to make love,
and when we finally did a year later, Watchmen in the background,
i felt my skin shredding, my freckles finding new pockets.
my knees were still bruised.

when i was 18 i fell in love with a boy who knew nothing,
except he had a fetish for Asian girls and not being able to
commit.
when he choked me for the first time i thought i died and for a minute
i was so
happy.

for two years he placed circles around my feet, telling me i was
beautiful, but never just beautiful
enough. when i told him to stop yelling, he said i was too
weak.

when i was 21 i fell in love with a boy who didn’t force anything
but love
and understanding. he took his fingers and place heart shaped
bruises, kissing my skin until i burned.

on nights i couldn’t breathe he’d take me to the window
and place his palms upon my cheeks. i found moths within
his hair, and instead of saying don’t cry, he wipe tears away
and hold my hand.

when i was 21 i finally found out that love is meant to spend sunday
mornings making love until your bodies end and begin end
and begin end and begin. and making breakfast is better
with his arms around your
waist.

21 and i am in love with a boy,
22 is around the corner, and i will still be
in
love.

the sky was looming with gunmetal wisps,
tickle me pinks squeezing among lavenders.
sunny blues and cotton clouds merged among the
charcoal prophecies. darkness kissing light.

i was soaked within seconds, screaming yet
laughing, feeling my bones shake and rattle along the
drips.

i ran through puddles, the sky nothing but sheets of
recollections. my skin limp and drenched, becoming part of
the soggy grass between my toes.

the rain stopped within minutes, the sky changing to
juicy orange.
as i attempted to dry myself with sopping towels, i stared at the sky,
and was reminded of us making love. beauty, beauty, beauty.

behind pseudo sickness you crawl to me,
with your lies like flies between your teeth,
adderall caked on your cheeks. your fingers are
unwilling to leave prints, and i can only shake you
off.

yes, go leave. yes, escape if you must,
but i know any lands you walk on will spring with dead
weeds. because you twisted and turned me for two years,
speaking of love but instead giving me
icy nights and days full of eyeliner streaked tears.

go and live with your “gluten-sensitive” lifestyle,
your hypochondriac tainted glasses, seeing nothing but
no and no and no and empty voids,
running through role-plays that are always so much more appealing then
a beautiful girl who ripped her heart out for
you.

no, i’m not cynical. no, i’m not
angry.
i am frustrated. wishing you had cried for me for weeks, and i know
you didn’t. i am thinking of those bruises on your neck, your
"**** buddy" and how your step-sister was a better choice
for you.

so leave, please, just leave.
and no, i don’t want to see you.
you can’t leave ashes in my mouth, not this time.

i know it’s such a cliche thing to say, to tell you your
eyes look like coffee mixed with cream, but your
hair reminds me of pennies sitting at the bottom of
rivers. and your shoulders feel like the mountains i stumbled
through in New Mexico.
i know it doesn’t make much sense to say your tongue contains
unreadable syllables, but your fingers create lightening,
and before you touch me, there’s thunder rumbling through my
sternum.
and i think the solar system is within your cheeks,
and those tears you spill have all the diamonds i could ever
want.
i know it’s such a cliche thing to say, to tell you your eyes
look like coffee mixed with cream, but you taste like
sunshine.

when i was fourteen i gave my first *******
without even knowing what “*******”
meant.
lips did not touch my
lady organs until i was
seventeen.
when i was fifteen i gave over fifty blow jobs,
approximately over one hundred hand jobs
and received one to ten
fingerings.
the boy at the time could only say, “you’re so good,
you’re just so *******
****”.
with my uneasiness and black rimmed eyes i
said little. all i wanted to do was
please.

i was sitting with a friend and as her soberness vanished,
she told me a man had never gone down on her.
i looked at her with wide eyes and when asked why,
she said,
"it’s just too weird. i don’t trust any man down there."
yet she could deliver tongue thrusts and gags left and right.

when the first man kissed my other lips,
he said i tasted wonderful, delicious, i was the drink
he savored for.
and i remember in that moment that i wasn’t just a
"girl".
i had transformed into cleopatra.

i had a man say i tasted like chicken, and i was his
favorite meal. as his tongue flickered, i would ***
inside clouds. and i wondered why this was such a
hidden treasure.

i wish for all women to be kissed, on both sets of lips.
all women to experience tongues dancing within their
insides. i want thighs trembling like earthquakes,
moans erupting like untamed volcanoes.
i want all women to become cleopatra, joan of arc,
ophelia, marilyn.
i want all women to
become
celestial.

wavelets on the wall were colors i couldn’t find within
my own strings,
your hair, the color of copper dancing in the sunshine,
the tears you spilled the deliverance i
hungered for.
i want trees within my lungs, and i want the branches
to grow within me, so i can have leaves and flowers
and the need to need.
kaleidoscope horizons were kissing my brain,
and i saw you through vibrations,
and i wondered if all we are is
wires connecting
connecting.
radio wires attempting to find other waves that
will collide within us to make
beautiful music.
and i knew, knew, knew, that your vibrations
were made to shake and gallop within
my own drums.
and when i cried you told me i was beautiful and i
knew i was everything within the galaxies,
your goddess that held
fire within her
fingers.

his fingers pluck among my curves and i am his guitar,
and with each chord he strums my skin sizzles.
within my earlobes he whispers all the obscenity i crave,
murmuring tunes while our eyelashes flutter along
late night rainstorms.
among my neck he skims among pastures,
breathing beams through my clavicle.
his tongue riffs between my core, leaving ashes
behind.
he finds the beat within my hips, my pelvis
pounding and churning disco, rock operas, ***** rap
to the tempo of creaking
mattress.
his mouth panting lyrics, his teeth carving
notes.
with the growl of my name, i am singing it over
and over and over
and over.

God to me is nothing more than fiction,
but his attendance is fervent
when your tongue flickers between
my thighs.

between reality and sedatives,
I was a mermaid with green glimmering
scales and sopping hair with highlights of sun.
you were the sailor and I was singing you home,
home, home.

between ****** and originality,
I wanted to break the bed with
the daemons creeping between my cradles.

between fainting and breathing in
kaleidoscopes, the atmosphere
was nothing but the lines between your lips.

between ******* and sleeping,
******* and sleeping, I cannot remember what
real life felt like. between love bites and bruises,
I no longer want to know what clean skin looks
like.

between kisses and *******,
I have danced through clouds and
met with stars, and they have told me
what I already
knew.

i have mentioned i like morning ***.

but i have forgotten to talk about *** late at night. after one am. when you’re drunk. when you’re sober. when all you can hear is the sighs of the mattress and the far distant squalls in the streets, the sirens mewling past as your cries muffle into blackness.

the later the better, for you tend to hold on tighter, curl your legs behind his knees until he buckles. your name from his lips sounds like rainstorms. it is when your inner demons are released.
when his fingers dig deeper, his teeth scrape harder. he pulls until your scalp is burning, throttles until nothing but spit emanates.  
it is dangerous, it is lovely, it is living. you bite each other’s lips until you taste nothing but him, guzzling him until your internals are churning and gushing with him. you remember thinking how one drunken night at three am was enough.
but then he came again at four. then he came again at five.
and it was at seven in the morning when you were covered in his crux you couldn’t turn away. you wanted the morning ***, you wanted the late night ***. you wanted to be flooded and whisked until your
body was nothing but his
testimony.

the city winds had ****** me up and spat me back out,
and i thought i was so hip and unknown, with swirling
leopard prints and black gloved hands. a boy by my side
that looked at me with thunderstorms.
the city buildings shadowed me and protected me from
the truth attempting to leave bruises on my
buckled knees.
a tourist in uncharted waters, a damsel
who continuously puts herself in
distress.

my hair was Medusa, his fingers were
Dionysus, and when they fused,
our Mount Olympus was created, tasting like
berries and scratching at snake bites
scabbing and itching to be
reopened.

his kisses tasted like nostalgia.

i’m an american girl who is super glue, affixing
herself on whatever will stay long
enough.

you pulled the pearls tighter upon
my throat and maybe it was the alcohol,
or the way your tongue fit between my teeth
too perfectly,
but i swear i could see our atoms colliding together,
and i wanted our explosions
to fill the night sky with asteroids
and shooting
stars.

if i am a cloud, than you are
the bolts between the vapors.
with wool spinning between my canines,
i’m eating the white fluff like cotton candy.
your flares ***** holes through my dripping
crystals.
cumulus merging with stratocumulus,
cherry hues making love with
sunset oranges.
if i am a cloud, than you are the rain
droplets resting within me,
the sun rays shaking and quacking in
me

when i was ten i believed kissing was
only between two people deliriously in love.
when i was fifteen, i believed holding hands would
only make me throw up, and when a boy wanted to watch
you watch him play video games, it was considered
romantic.

do puppies fall in love? for my ears are floppy
for you and my tail hasn’t stopped wagging since
november.
if i could be your jellyfish i’d hover between your
bones, tangling my tentacles through your
mane, stinging you with limp
currents.

i’m wishy and washy, crawling through
tie-dye dreams and licking clean pasta
bowls. i always thought second best was
enough, and when i was eighteen bruises were
proof. ideas were stuck in my brain cells. i bit my lips
until dead skin cells tasted like ketchup.

i’m creeping through your marrows,
gnawing, gnawing, gnawing.
******* until my tongue is lead,
aching for your teeth tearing through
my flesh,

i could be your jellyfish. you told me about one that lives
forever.
i’ll keep floating, if you keep
watching.

"you are my princess,
but i’ll ******* like a *****”
you never did either. i was granted no jewels,
no sapphires, no rubies, not even zirconia
to match this forgery of skin.
my neck felt too small in your tired fingers,
and too many times i waited.
(snap, break, snap)
too tired to throw me down,
awake enough to bruise my blood
vessels.

"you are my princess"
i felt more like the penniless ******,
breathing in vapors while my smudged eyes
twitched and itched.
i would arrive at your doorstep, salivating,
and you never even had a bone to
throw.

"i’ll ******* like a *****"
i wanted your chunks like maggots crave
the panting dead,
i wanted your intestines wrapped with my
intestines, your lungs breathing in my
lungs, every centimeter of your veins
grinding and sweating against my veins.

"you suffocated me"

you had the world at your feet,
and you couldn’t even take one
step.

911 used to be scabbed on the back of my
knees, and soaked carpets
were like coming
home. her eyes were nothing like
mine, and the police always
wanted to know. but i hated the way their
lips smacked against their teeth.


911 used to be tied to my fingers with
****** ribbons, and if you ask me who my kindergarten
teacher was, i couldn’t tell you.
chocolate milk nights were thick with
bruises. i made friends with the images in between the tiles
in the bathroom.

911 used to be etched on my stomach,
and even now i cannot see red blue and white flashing lights
without wanting to puke.
six months is forever when you’re seven years old,
but daddy
always said life is too short
anyway.

we’re hipster lovers with our
baggy sweaters and tortoise-rimmed
glasses.
your choice in music is too cool,
i gobble up literature like oreo milkshakes.
we’re hipster lovers
with our admiring Blake,
your multi-colored jeans, my eyeliner
thick and sharp.
you’re the hipster boy with unruly hair,
and cool as a cucumber temper.
i’m the hipster girl cool with too much sadness and
a fetish with Plath.
we make an awkward, cute team, you and i.

i’ll borrow your drug impacted jumper,
if you keep reading me zen poetry,
and we can dawdle inside indie
coffee shops while we hold
hands and sip
slowly.

there was a rip in my stockings,
inner limb, long and exposed.

"i like your tights"

clunky boots, shorts, a skirt, a dress.
i was wearing them when your fingers played
with my insides.
legs long enough to drown in,
did you imagine them tangled, bruised?
my thighs are my gems, they will quiver,
damp under the sheer, ripped, flowered, polka-dotted
material.

daddy, lover, with your palms along
my calves, your teeth ridging the edge.
baby boy, with your nails tearing my hips.

i will be your black-eyed beauty.
the night you spoke my name in inked lights,
the night your lips tasted like cigarettes and chocolate,
my tights shredded.


knee high socks and blood red lipstick,
i’ve been wearing nothing but ripped
tights.

at a young age, my father taught me to love
insects.
instead of killing, my father would capture spiders,
centipedes, beetles in empty pickle jars.
he would show me the anatomy, let me admire
the different colors, the shape of the pinchers,
how each one moved.
we had a praying mantis hung up on the wall,
it scared my girlfriends.
we had a hairy tarantula encased in a glass orb,
guests could never stare at it for too long.

i compare these insects to my father.
elegiac, with pinchers hidden but
present.
like the insects, i could never understand my father.
when he disappeared for days, reappearing with nothing
but a frown and the scent of beer,
i imagined him with the wings of a beetle, and he had
to fly off to a faraway kingdom.

i compare these insects to my father,
beautiful, but threatening.
his scorpion’s tail was his hand with a bottle,
his poison was the amber liquid squishing
his blood.

i compare these insects to my father,
fragile, unwieldy.
as a butterfly glides through spring, it is similar
to my father discussing his favorite things,
or deep in thought in a novel, or how his eyes
glint when he sees me after a long
absence.
but my father is far more exquisite than
any butterfly.

i still am intrigued by insects, yet i do not
admire them in empty jars.
i set them free, imagining if my father ever longed
to escape his own
jar.

it is not butterflies you placed in my tummy,
but large ferocious birds,
with wingspans fluttering against the inners of my
lungs,
beaks prodding my intestine,  
their necks snarling with my esophagus.
their caws pulsate in and out my pores,
and these birds want to fly, fly, fly
towards you.
but i bite with anxious molars, and their blood tastes like
cranberries.
choking up red soaked feathers,
i wonder if you have birds
too.

i want nothing more than a new years kiss
from you.
so save your lips for me, save your
fingers for me,
until next year.

speak strawberries to me,
and i will caress jam
for you.

my soma has been your manifestation.
you vanquished unconditionally,
these love (bites)
have been daily aide-mémoires, that this
fever will not break.

flames are within your veins, darling.

i have seen your inner
demons, and what they hunger
for.
your fingers to my wrists, your
teeth sinking. sinking. sinking
(it has sunk, anchors to wrists)

my demons kissed yours in the hours
of lust and the inexplicable.
my demons ****** yours in the woods
withering.
my demons held yours with homely
silence.

it is when i counted your eyelashes
at daybreak
that my demons finally paced alongside
me.

dear mom & dad,
i’m sorry i only write about *** and
alcohol.
the two skip hand in hand, with bedroom eyes
and laced up limbs.
but at least i only **** intelligent
men.
i made the mistake of moaning names
that held no publication,
cleaning someone’s blood lingering
inside vacant minds.

dear mom & dad,
i’m sorry i blame everything on you.
but let us be honest, your genetics have baked
a pie that tastes like
chaos and ethanol.

mother, esoteric, scripts i cut
my fingers on,
your bloodline is in every poem i write
about love.
i think we’ve both been falling for the
wrong ones.

mama, do you remember the dream catcher you broke?
feathers and glass.
my nightmares consist of knowing i will never amount to
anything.

father, knowledge like yours never ceases,
spilling and surging.
but you are sad. sad. sad.
i smell your smoke through cloths tattered.

beer was a better lover to you, than
anyone could ever be.
i have been in competition with inked, broken souls.
tell me i’ll win every gold medal.
i take everything from you,
but one day i’ll make you so ******* proud.

dear mom & dad,
the scars are slipping but the sound of broken
plates shake(quake) my nightmares.

dear mom & dad,
maybe we can sit and talk about our lives.
maybe i’d rather chug rat poison.

i. the night you called me over-sensitive was the night
i filled myself with empty soda cans. i attempted to wash away
your scent. 50. 51. 52. times.
it all still stinks of you.
ii. you used to make me wait until three in the morning.
you never apologized. the last time was until four, and you greeted me
with a kiss that peeled my lips off,
threw me against the wall feeding me words and stale fragments.
iii. the night you said you were ******* her should
have been it. instead you held me,
and i imagined her blonde white hair, her pasty thighs bouncing.
you used to say you loved my cinnamon skin.
iv. you want to return to what we were.
but we were never anything except petal filled wishes and
gluten-free mistakes.
v. do not look for me anymore,
i am gone. i will be gone. i will be kissing stars and men with
accents and minds that are unlatched.
do not look for me anymore.

i think i noticed you when all the clouds were forming
above my eyelashes.
almonds, dinosaurs. shaky fingers,
unknown province.

tourist among my terrain.
the grounds are disfigured, but it’s
in between the crowns you find the
gems most miss.
the runnel will flow if you penetrate
precisely.

bars with anonymous desires blatantly
painted across my stomach.
a scarlet E.
for everything. everyone. earth tremors in your pores.
say my name enough times that i see the letters
on your tongue.
awkward puppy love,
i’m whining until you scratch behind my ears,
clutch my scruff hard.

your growls will turn to howls if i try hard enough,
and i feel your frissons entangling with my DNA.
awkward puppy love,
i’m licking your face until you squeeze me,
i’ll give you love bites if you stay one more night.

awkward puppy love,
can i keep you forever if i give you
sheets, sustenance,
***?

let’s pretend that my flaws are my
best qualities.
that you’re dependable, and your
shoulders will not shake.
let’s pretend i didn’t swallow his
nectar.
let’s pretend the marks upon my scruff
originated from my
callused fingers.
let’s pretend i can only ***
with
you.
that your spit wasn’t scratched upon
her pale fat thighs for almost 2
years.
let’s pretend that my lungs are steel,
and my ribs are made of
diamonds.

so if you wanna kiss me tonight,
kiss me hard so i can taste your
mistakes,
with a touch of plasma.
choke me until i’m on my knees,
confessing my sins.
hot like peppers.
cold like the snow we fell in.

we can never return
to that
night.

i. i have convinced myself i look the most beautiful with bruises and
hair that has not been brushed.
ii. sensitivity is my virtue. i wear it on my eyelashes and cry it all
off so i look like a raccoon waiting to be abandoned.
iii. i think if you opened me up inside you would find
books with dog-eared pages and
dandelions.
iv. if i fall in love with you, hold me down with cords
and fabrications.
v. i’m wearing lipstick too much, because all i can think of
lately is your fingers in my mouth and the
cliffs i need to jump off
of.

trill through my veins,
the cadence matching to that of your
muted steps.
drained ribs, vital with the tingle of
your
bristles. trill through my veins, trill through my
veins. let my anatomy be
your melody.

drunk *** is more logical,
you moan things you could never say sober,
your moves fumble but end with awkward
names shout out and nails
filled with blood and dead skin cells of people you
don’t want to
remember.
drunk *** makes more sense to me. because i feel more
****, more alive, yet more devastated.
so when i’m ******* you, i’m trying to ****
out the problems i can’t seem to
erase.
don’t take it personally. well, that’s what people try
to tell me. yet i take everything personally.
(i’m working on it)
i’ll keep having drunk ***,
and trying to mend the bruises that i crave for,
trying to bandage the heart that i can’t find the
beat for
anymore.
people tell me they don’t understand why i’m crying,
and all i can say is,
same here. i don’t get it
either.

we always believe forever. the concept of
your fingers in my spine.
kneading until our bones turn to ash.
there were too many sings. neon.
flashing.
warning.
warning.
warning.
it was a pile up i could never have
prevented.
your lips moved like ribbons upon gifts,
smooth, flowing, not once did your lips
crack.
but your actions moved like snow melting,
i never knew when it began and when it
finished.
when it all is over, i hope the grass will be green.
i hope it won’t be like the color of your eyes, though.
with your mother in New Mexico, you would
speak for me. tell her what i wanted,
closing my throat with your straight forward
cowardice.
with my friends in bars, you would slink behind
my already torn open lungs, refusing to
participate outside your comfort
zone.

i used to believe i couldn’t live without you.
but i can live without anyone, if i try hard enough.

you would think of me in brief sentences, i always
thought of you in papers with too lengthy of conclusions.
remember how we would argue about
who loved each other more?

we both know who the winner is.
your brain was my recluse, but your heart
was just a balloon.

i never figured how to blow it
back up.

There is a blue stain from my pajamas blotched upon the white wall from where you pushed me up against. From when your hips gridded against my thighs, a graph with linear equations that doubled and doubled and tripled. From when your fingers found the furrows inside my skin, planting seeds I am eager yet scared to see blossom.

There is a blue stain from my pajamas specked upon the wall, from when our hunger was too ravenous for even the wolves I tried to suppress. From the sweat I licked off and tasted sweeter than gumdrops coated with honey. From when my legs found your waist, squeezing, Medua’s hair demolishing a man too good, too tasty. From where your palms collided with my wrists, blacks and blues and yellows shooting through closely knit pores.

There is a blue stain from my pajamas splattered upon the wall, and I pass it with a smirk, feeling the presence of you. What will be our next victim, I wonder

cure yourself by finding another boy, one who wants to hold
your fingers as you lose yourself in flaxen
starlights.
cure yourself by singing until your throat chafes
like sandpaper.
cure yourself by telling yourself that you are the moon,
and the moon is you, and she is laughing with you,
shining for you, waiting for you to glimmer.
cure yourself by finding the right people, the ones who
grasp you with splintered paws and souls
searching for whatever tastes like bubblegum.
darling, you won’t be cured right away,
take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute,
don’t forget to watch the sun
rise, to smell the coffee with shaky fingers.
cure yourself by watching the cream dance with the
shadows.
bruises are only
temporary.

i fall asleep at six in the morning on weekends,
but through the weeks i collapse as as soon as
ten.

i think ***** has become my new lover,
he leaves hickeys, caked like dried
paint.
he doesn’t disappoint, slurring in words
heavy and foamy.

you are mad.
(because i no longer need you)
but i will crave you until my insides
**** the earth.

maybe that is why being sober for too long
scares me.
we always preach about never becoming our
parents, yet before we realize it we are talking, eating like them.
my mothers boots are too tight.
i think your fathers fight just right.

you miss me now, because all you have is my ghost.
and i hope she haunts you every step of the way,
because for three years you
haunted
me.
and i still can’t fall asleep without
drowning within
you.
i hate sleeping alone.
i hope you do too.

walking with wedges always seems like the best, until
you’re walking home at seven in the morning.
i still taste cold pizza and the pina colada hookah.
i waited for you to breathe me in like the vapors,
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i used to think i was the period in every sentence,
but you’re the comma and i’m the semi colon,
we’re never ending, sticking between awkward
phrases and short cut
sentences.
he never sunk his teeth so deep, and i am so bruised
i think my bones are bleeding.
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i did not feel alive until five in the morning, when all i could feel
were his fingers digging in my cells, searching for everything
i thought i could never become.
i never felt this alive in his arms, and now i see all he did
was pull the blindfold until i saw inky blackness,
pushed the pillow in my mouth as i continue to cough up chunks.
let me run through the soggy leaves, breathing in the crisp air until
i collapse.
youth has never tasted so ******* beautiful,
love